NEWS RELEASE FROM THE
REGISTERED NURSING HOME ASSOCIATION
Issued 27th August 2005
RNHA CHALLENGES GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE
TO OFT REPORT ON CARE HOME FEES
‘A classic head in the sand case’ is how the government’s response to a recent Office of Fair Trading (OFT) report on care home fees has been described by the Registered Nursing Home Association (RNHA).
The RNHA points to the fact that neither the OFT in its original report published in May 2005, nor the government in its formal response earlier this week to the report’s recommendations, has considered whether the amounts paid to nursing homes by local authorities and the NHS for publicly funded patients are covering the actual costs of providing care.
This, the RNHA claims, distorts the conclusions of the report to the point where they become almost meaningless, since the fundamental economic realities of providing care for older people have been completely ignored.
Said RNHA chief executive officer Frank Ursell: “It seems as though the OFT and the government are playing a game whose rules they have made in order to stifle discussion of the central issue about care of older people - whether or not the two thirds of nursing home patients who qualify for public funding receive a level of financial support that will enable care providers to deliver the best possible quality of care.
“Independent experts have reported over the past few years that the fees received by nursing homes from local authorities and the NHS are, on average, more than £80 a week below the true costs of the care provided. That works out at a shortfall or around £4,000 per patient per year. Something has to be done about this scandalous situation, but the OFT and the government appear to think that it is not their problem.”
He added: “Instead, the Government has accepted the OFT’s impractical cop out and has focused on transparency of fees. The RNHA agrees that fees should be transparent but neither the Government nor the OFT offers a template of how those fees could be transparent and, therefore, comparable.
“Clearly, the costs vary from one nursing home to another depending on a wide variety of circumstances, including property prices, labour costs and the type of patients cared for. All these issues have to be taken into consideration when agreeing on a fair price for care. The problem is that, for most nursing homes in most parts of the country, the fees they receive from public bodies are very far from fair.”
In reacting to the government’s official response to the OFT report, the RNHA is calling for greater transparency from Ministers on their intentions for funding the care of older people. “Are they saying there is not a problem with current funding?,” asked Mr Ursell. “Or are they saying there is a problem but they don’t intend to do anything about it? As things stand, no one knows the answer.”
The RNHA is preparing its own response to the OFT report which, it says, will challenge the validity and credibility of a study which has failed to look at the costs that nursing homes have to meet.
END
Notes to editors:
1. The OFT study, published in May 2005, looked at the market for care homes for older people in the UK.
2. The government’s response was published in August 2005.
3. Independent analysts Laing & Buisson have calculated that, on average, the shortfall between the fees paid to nursing homes by social services departments (including a contribution from the NHS) for looking after older people and the actual costs incurred by nursing homes in providing the care works out at around £80 per patient per week.
For further information please contact:
Frank Ursell, Chief Executive Officer, RNHA (Tel: 0121-454 2511 or 07785 227000)
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